by Kiki Thorpe
“Is she okay?” Gabby asked. The other fairies shrugged.
Iridessa flew back to them. Her face looked grim.
“There is no castle,” she told them. “It’s a mirage.”
“How do you know?” Lainey asked.
“The air by the water is cool,” Iridessa explained. “The air above is warmer. When that happens, light bends in a funny way. What we thought was a castle was probably more cliffs. A trick of light made them seem bigger than they are.”
“I can’t believe it!” Kate said. The castle had looked so real!
Iridessa put her hands on her hips. “Believe me. I’m a light fairy. I know these things.”
“It’s okay,” Mia said. “We still have fairy dust left. We’ll just fly back to shore and figure out where to go next.”
“Er, right.” Slowly, Kate took the bag of fairy dust from her pocket, praying there was enough left. But as she started to open it, the entire island gave a sudden shudder.
The bag fell from her hand. It rolled down the steep side of the rock and fell into the water.
“The fairy dust!” Mia cried.
All four fairies darted toward the bag. Before they could reach it, the water next to the island started to bubble and churn.
As they watched in horror, a huge leathery head emerged from the water. The creature opened its mouth…and swallowed the bag of fairy dust!
Silvermist and the other fairies watched the small bag disappear.
“Our fairy dust!” Iridessa dove foward as if she might still save the bag. But there was nothing she could do. The dust was gone.
Another tremor shook the ground beneath the girls’ feet. “What’s happening to the island?” Mia cried.
“Oh no!” Suddenly, Silvermist realized why the rock looked so strange. “This is no island!”
The giant head swiveled around just as the girls realized they were standing on the back of a monstrous tortoise. They tried to rise into the air. But they couldn’t. They’d used up their fairy dust.
Discomfort crossed the tortoise’s wizened face. He opened his mouth and hiccupped. His shell jerked and trembled, rocking the girls.
“Hold on!” Silvermist called to them. “We’ll help you!”
Even as the words left her mouth, she wondered what they could do. They were only tiny fairies. How could they save four girls who were ten times their size?
We might be small, but we still have magic, Silvermist reminded herself. She turned to Fawn. “You speak Tortoise, don’t you? Can you talk to him?”
“I’ll try!” Fawn swooped closer to the tortoise’s face. She was a speck next to his enormous head. Silvermist could see Fawn waving her arms, though she couldn’t hear what she was saying.
The tortoise gazed at Fawn and slowly blinked. Then he opened his mouth and hiccupped.
Fawn flew back to the fairies. “It’s not working,” she said. “Tortoises don’t hear well, and this one’s deafer than most. From the look of him, he could be thousands of years old.”
Another huge hiccup rocked the tortoise. It knocked the girls off their feet. They clung to the ridges on his shell to keep from sliding off his back.
“His hiccups are getting worse!” Rosetta said.
“It must be the fairy dust,” said Fawn. “It’s giving him indigestion.”
“The girls aren’t going to be able to hold on much longer,” said Iridessa.
Silvermist’s eyes darted over the water as she tried to judge the distance to shore. It was too far for the girls to swim, and who knew what dangers lurked in the depths. But maybe there was another way….
“Fawn,” she said, “what do tortoises eat?”
“Plants, mostly,” said Fawn.
“Like that seaweed?” Silvermist pointed to a large tangle of kelp floating on the surface of the water.
“That would be a tasty tortoise snack,” Fawn agreed.
Silvermist nodded. “Okay. I have a plan.”
Seconds later, the fairies flew to their tasks. Rosetta touched the seaweed with her garden magic so each leaf grew plumper and juicier. Iridessa made the seaweed glisten with sunlight to catch the tortoise’s attention.
Meanwhile, Fawn buzzed around, trying to coax him forward.
The tortoise swiveled his head in the direction of the seaweed. He stretched his neck toward it.
Now came Silvermist’s turn. With her water magic, she summoned a wave to carry the seaweed just out of his reach.
Slowly, like an iceberg shifting, the tortoise moved toward the seaweed. Each time he got close, Silvermist used another wave to pull the tempting snack away.
Wave by wave, the tortoise carried the girls closer to shore. “It’s working!” Fawn cried. The other fairies cheered.
With a final surge, Silvermist sent the seaweed onto shore. The tortoise followed, pulling his heavy body half out of the water.
“Girls! Now!” Silvermist cried.
The girls leaped from his shell, dropping onto the wet sand below. The tortoise didn’t seem to notice. He chomped the last bit of seaweed, hiccupped one more time, and then pushed himself backward into the water, sliding below the waves.
“We made it!” Lainey cheered. Mia and Gabby hugged each other, while the fairies fluttered happily around them.
Kate was the only one not celebrating. She bent over to pick something up from the sand.
It was a lunch box. The same one they’d found the day before.
“We didn’t make it anywhere,” Kate said, shaking her head. “We’re right back where we started.”
“Gah!” In a fit of frustration, Kate hurled the lunch box into the sea as far as she could throw it.
But it didn’t sink. A wave carried it back to shore, depositing the box at her feet. See? it seemed to say. It’s useless to try to leave.
“There has to be a way out of here,” Lainey said. “We can find a way around the cliffs. Or…or the fairies can do some magic. Right?” She looked at them hopefully.
Fawn shook her head. “We need fairy dust to do magic. We just used ours up.”
“You mean we’re stuck here?” Gabby asked.
Mia turned to Kate. “This is your fault.”
“Me?” Kate exclaimed. “What did I do?”
“You led us here,” Mia snapped. “You said we should go to the castle. You wasted the fairy dust. And now we’re going to be stuck here eating gross lunch-box leftovers forever!”
Kate wanted to say That’s not true. But she couldn’t. She had led them to the Lost Coast. She had urged them to the castle.
I didn’t tell them the truth, Kate realized, thinking of the two-headed coin. She hadn’t considered what was best for her friends. She’d only been thinking of getting her own way.
Kate looked at Lainey and Gabby. She wished they would say something to show they were still on her side.
They looked back at her with big, scared eyes. But neither one said anything.
When a child stops believing in fairies, a fairy disappears. That moment on the beach made Kate understand why. Her friends had stopped believing in her, and now she wanted to disappear.
“There’s still one thing we haven’t thought of,” Silvermist said. “The troll said things leave the Lost Coast when they’re found. Maybe someone will find us.”
“But who’s even looking?” Mia said miserably. “Our parents won’t miss us. Time always stops when we go to Never Land. And we didn’t tell anyone in Pixie Hollow where we were going. How will they know where to find us?”
“I don’t know,” Silvermist said. “But it’s our only hope.”
There was nothing to do but wait. They sat in the sand, searching the empty sky, as minutes and hours ticked by.
To comfort herself, Kate looked through the treasures in her backpack. But now these, too,
seemed like sad reminders of her failures.
During her first softball match, she’d fumbled a catch and lost the game.
And the library book. Kate thumbed unhappily through the pages. Who keeps a library book for six months and never even bothers to read it? she scolded herself.
Even Ellie’s shiny button eyes seemed full of reproach. You didn’t take care. You lost me, they seemed to say. Dear Ellie, her first best friend.
Was there anything she hadn’t messed up? Kate thought back to their very first visit to Pixie Hollow, the first time they’d met the Never fairies. Kate had “borrowed” fairy dust to learn how to fly. But the truth was, she’d stolen it. So what if she’d been tricked into taking it by the fast-flying fairy Vidia? Kate herself had scooped it up, in the dead of night, and never stopped to ask whether it was okay.
And the return home had been no better. Clarion, queen of the Never fairies, had given Kate and her friends more fairy dust so they might fly back to Never Land one day. But they’d never had a chance to use it because Kate had lost that, too.
Kate’s eyes suddenly went wide. She’d lost that, too!
“I know where we can find more fairy dust!” she cried, jumping to her feet.
Kate looked around the long coastline, and her heart dropped. The lost mittens and hats and balls and dolls seemed to stretch on for miles. What chance did they have of finding one tiny thing in that endless wasteland?
It’s hopeless, Kate thought.
She took a deep breath. “No, it’s not,” she said aloud. “Not totally.” Hope was the one thing they could not lose. Kate knew once it was gone, they might never find it again.
“Believe,” she whispered. She picked up a kite and looked underneath it.
“Believe,” Kate murmured as she dug through a pile of lost socks. “Believe,” she said louder. She peered inside a boot.
Her friends watched in alarm. “Has Kate lost her mind?” Rosetta whispered.
“No.” Kate straightened and faced her. “I got us into this mess, but I’m going to fix it. I lost a bag of fairy dust a long time ago. Remember?”
Kate watched her friends’ expressions change from disbelief to understanding to dismay.
“We’ll never find it,” Mia said, looking around.
“You can believe what you want,” Kate said. “I believe we will.” She turned back to her search.
Gabby suddenly spoke up. “I believe, Kate,” she said. She turned over a sand bucket and peeked inside.
“I do, too,” said Silvermist. “I believe!” She began to sift through a pile of loose buttons.
The others took up the chant. They looked in purses and underneath hubcaps. They dug through water bottles, homework, and umbrellas. Every time Kate wanted to give up, she reminded herself that there was only one choice. They could sit around waiting for someone to save them. Or they could try to save themselves.
“Believe!” Kate shouted.
She was concentrating so hard that when she finally saw the tiny bag, she almost didn’t recognize it. It was sitting atop a crest of sand, looking much smaller than Kate remembered.
She plucked it up. It was the size of a peach pit, made of honey-colored velvet so soft Kate knew only Never fairies could have made it.
“It’s here!” Kate cried. “I found it!”
Everyone raced to her and gathered around. Kate loosened the drawstring on the bag, and they all peeked inside. Fairy dust glittered back at them.
“But is it enough?” Mia asked. The fairy dust had been meant for the four girls only. Now they would need to share it with the four fairies, too.
“It will have to be. But…” Kate hesitated. She knew what they had to do. “We can’t take anything with us. We’ll have to leave all the toys behind.”
The girls looked at the things they’d lovingly collected. “Not even BowBow?” Gabby asked, squeezing her stuffed dog.
Kate shook her head. “Not even him.”
With heavy hearts, the girls said good-bye to their old belongings. Lainey gave each stuffed animal a kiss. Mia combed her fingers through her favorite doll’s hair.
Gabby hugged BowBow tight. “I won’t forget you,” she told him before adding him to the pile.
Kate tapped her softball for good luck and set it on the pile. She emptied the coins from her pockets. Then she picked up Ellie. She held her close to her face.
“You understand, don’t you, old friend?” she whispered.
The little elephant smiled back at her. Kate could have sworn she was saying yes.
She placed Ellie next to the other toys, then opened the bag of fairy dust.
One by one, the fairies and girls took pinches of fairy dust. Kate could tell they were holding back, taking the smallest amount. Even so, by the time it was Kate’s turn, there was only a smidgen of fairy dust left.
Would it be enough?
Kate sprinkled the fairy dust over her head and shoulders. Almost at once, she felt the tingle that told her its magic was working.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” Mia said. The others nodded.
They flew up, up, up, following the cliffs. A wind blew hard against them, as if it didn’t want them to leave. Kate glanced over her shoulder as the beach receded beneath them.
At last, they landed atop the cliffs. As she touched down, Kate felt a lightness she hadn’t felt all day. She didn’t think it had anything to do with fairy dust.
Mia landed next to her. “I’m sorry for getting mad at you,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Kate told her. “You were right. I did get us lost. I’m just glad we were able to find our way out.”
They looked down at the beach below. From that great height, the piles on the beach looked like nothing more than trash.
“I know there’s something down there that I want,” Mia said. “But it’s funny—all of a sudden I can hardly remember what it is.”
“I know what you mean,” Kate said. She took one last look at the coastline below, then she turned and faced ahead.
They were standing at the edge of a great meadow. A stream wound through it like a silver ribbon. In the near distance, they could see a tall mountain.
A boulder sat near the meadow’s edge. The rock was perfectly white, except for a small black smudge on one side.
Something about the spot drew Kate’s attention. She moved closer to examine it.
“Everyone! Come quick!”
They all gathered around to stare at the mark on the rock. It read:
Tink Was Here.
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